The good news for Jorgen (who may not be reading this thread any more)
is that one can still be sure of getting the original install.packages()
by using
utils:::install.packages( ... )
with *three* colons, to get the internal (namespace) version of the
function.
Duncan Murdoch
On 21/03/2024 4:31 a.m., Martin Maechler wrote:>>>>>> "Duncan Murdoch on Wed, 20 Mar 2024 13:20:12 -0400
writes:
>
> > On 20/03/2024 1:07 p.m., Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> >> On 20/03/2024 12:37 p.m., Ben Bolker wrote:
>
> >>> Ivan, can you give more detail on this? I've heard
this
> >>> issue mentioned, but when I open RStudio and run
> >>> find("install.packages") it returns
> >>> "utils::install.packages", and running dump()
from
> >>> within RStudio console and from an external "R
> >>> --vanilla" gives identical results.
> >>>
> >>> I thought at one point this might only refer to the GUI
> >>> package-installation interface, but you seem to be
> >>> saying it's the install.packages() function as well.
> >>>
> >>> Running an up-to-date RStudio on Linux, FWIW -- maybe
> >>> weirdness only happens on other OSs?
> >>
> >> On MacOS, I see this:
> >>
> >> > install.packages function (...) .rs.callAs(name, hook,
> >> original, ...) <environment: 0x7fa7c72a6268>
> >>
> >> I get the same results as you from find(). I'm not sure
> >> what RStudio is doing to give a different value for the
> >> function than what find() sees.
>
> > Turns out that RStudio replaces the install.packages
> > object in the utils package.
>
> > Duncan Murdoch
>
> Yes, and this has been the case for several years now, and I
> have mentioned this several times, too (though some of it
> possibly not in a public R-* mailing list).
>
> And yes, that they modify the package environment
> as.environment("package:utils")
> but leave the
> namespace asNamespace("utils")
> unchanged, makes it harder to see what's
> going on (but also has less severe consequences; if they kept to
> the otherwise universal *rule* that the namespace and package must have the
same objects
> apart from those only in the namespace,
> people would not even have access to R's true install.packages()
> but only see the RStudio fake^Hsubstitute..
>
> We are still not happy with their decision. Also
> help(install.packages) goes to R's documentation of R's
> install.packages, so there's even more misleading of useRs.
>
> Martin
>